Plants and helpful bacteria have developed a way to talk to one another, according to Prof Sharon Long, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Stanford University, California.
She has identified new genes that appear to help guide beneficial bacteria during their invasion of plant hosts. These findings, she believes, will help towards efforts to find alternatives to nitrogen fertilisers.
The legume family and rhizobium bacteria exchange chemical signals, she said, and in association with the bacteria the plants are able to grow and synthesise adequate protein without added nitrogen fertiliser.